A chance to remember varied merry Christmases

Thinking back over many, many Christmases at the Foley/mcclellan household, a few come to mind as, let’s say, “different.”

I remember the year that we asked our kids what they wanted and got the usual list, from dolls to toy cars, etc. The item that stood out was 6-yearold Mike Jr.’s request — he wanted a puppy.

A puppy? Where to find such a critter? We were living in Boise so the first place we looked was the city’s animal shelter.

Sharon and I looked in a few of the cages, and in a corner of the last one we checked was a little fuzzy terrier. He must have been just a few months old, and we fell in love with the little guy immediately.

He had a furry little face, and his fur seemed to frame his brown eyes, giving the appearance that he was wearing “spectacles” and I dubbed him “Specs” and that is what he was called for the nearly 10 years we had him.

I built a little “doghouse” gift box for him, and put it under the tree. Christmas morning, Specs was the star of the show. We all loved him, and he and Mike were bonded immediately.

A few months later, we had to make a family trip back to Orem, Utah, and left Specs with my mom, who stayed at our place while we were away.

When we returned, Mike made a beeline to find his puppy, and couldn’t find him. When I asked Mom, she said he got out, and “ran away!”

We headed once more for the animal shelter and there, in one of the first cages, was our special little pet. Thank God he was OK.

A couple of years later, we had moved back to Orem, and my mom, who had been living in Wyoming, decided to spend Christmas with us.

A couple of things about that visit stuck in our memories. First, she brought us a “Christmas tree.” Well, she called it that. Seems it was a couple of tumbleweeds that she had spray-painted white, and stuck the smaller one on top of the larger one, hung a few decorations on it, and tried to convince our kids it was a tree.

Fortunately, we had already erected the tree in our living room, so Mom’s was relegated to our basement family room. The kids were picking stickers out of their bare feet for weeks after it was gone.

This was also the era when I was a committed audiophile. I had built several stereo systems from kits for several years, and our current model had a built-in tape recorder.

I always took movies of our holidays but that year, in addition, I placed a microphone in the living room to catch the sound of the kids as they opened their gifts.

I left it on for most of the morning, and Sharon had begun fixing breakfast when we heard her shriek from the kitchen.

I ran in and she was swatting at a mouse that was trying to escape from a drawer (we still have the tape) and a few minutes later Sharon’s brother, Greg, showed up and Sharon felt that would be a good time for some “holiday cheer.”

“Who’d like a Bloody Mary?” she asked, and Mom, who always was up for such occasions, chirped up: “I’ll have a Bloody Mary!”

It was perfect — and we have it on tape.

Another of those “varied” Christmases was when flocked trees were the rage.

Always a “do it yourselfer,” I would never pay for someone else’s efforts if I figured I could do it.

So, on that very frigid (near zero degrees it was) December morn, I set the tree we’d purchased the day before in its stand, placed it in the driveway and assembled the stuff I’d need to “flock” our tree.

For those who may not know what flocking was, I’ll explain. It was a velvety product that was sprayed on the tree, using a vacuum cleaner with a special “flocking gun” on the blower side of the machine.) The gun had a water reservoir and a hookup for the bag of dry flock. When it was directed at whatever one decided needed the treatment, it left a lovely, fluffy deposit — usually.

You could also add a dye capsule to the water and tint the flock. Seems my decorator/wife had decided upon an orange-colored theme for that year, so an orange dye capsule was placed in the water reservoir, and I began to spray the tree.

When I was finished, we had a spectacular, orange, fuzzy tree. I was ready to warm up, and couldn’t wait to get myself and the tree inside.

Remember that it was a frigid morning, right?

Well, I opened the back door, and soon had the tree sitting in the proper spot in the living room. In a perfect world, after the tree was flocked it would sit outside until the water in the flock dried out, then brought in, but that wasn’t going to happen as cold as it was so I figured it could dry in the house.

Guess I should have read the directions, because as soon as it began to warm up, blobs of wet flock plopped onto the carpet, leaving the tree with a rather mangy appearance. Sharon covered the worst of it with well-placed decorations.

Rest assured, I never flocked a tree outside when it was near zero again.

And, needless to say, I was only too happy when the flocking fad faded.